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European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education issue 01 2020 vol. 5 Lives in Dialogue: Shared Musical-Relational Engagements in Music Therapy and Music Education Elizabeth Mitchell & Cathy Benedict Wilfrid Laurier University & Western University 33 EJPAE: 01 2020 vol. 5 Elizabeth Mitchell & Cathy Benedict; Lives in Dialogue: Abstract Music therapists and music educators, within their distinct workplaces and often holding distinct mandates, share a common imperative to advocate for the value of music within society. This paper’s authors—a music therapist and a music educator— engage in “genuine dialogue” (Buber, 1947/2002) as a “primary source of understanding” (Garred, 2006, p. 105) in exploring the purpose of music within their respective disciplines. Through interrogating common conceptions of music, music education and music therapy, they propose that the theoretical and practical points of intersection between their fields are far broader in potential scope than is typically assumed, particularly within the current North American interdisciplinary discourse. Specifically, this paper’s authors present music-centered theoretical perspectives from the field of music therapy (Aigen, 2014) as providing a meeting place for transdisciplinary dialogue and a renewed vision for the purpose of musical engagement, a fundamentally relational act. This perspective includes recognition of music’s “para- musical” affordances, a concept that challenges overly simplistic distinctions between “music itself” and its “nonmusical benefits” (Ansdell, 2014). This perspective reminds the music educator that it would be remiss to neglect the personal and relational affordances of the medium, while imploring the music therapist to resist reducing music to a mere tool for achievement of a nonmusical outcome, thereby neglecting the medium—the music—itself. Keywords: Music education, music therapy, music-centered, transdisciplinary, relational 34 EJPAE: 01 2020 vol. 5 Elizabeth Mitchell & Cathy Benedict; Lives in Dialogue: Lives in Dialogue: Shared Musical-Relational Engagements in Music Therapy and Music Education Elizabeth Mitchell1 & Cathy Benedict2 Introduction It is in the nature of beginning that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. (Arendt, 1958, pp. 177-178) n the opening quote Arendt reminds us of the importance of not just a first meeting, but all meetings, regardless of what may have come before. This article Ifirst and foremost reflects our desire to begin. Throughout, we endeavour an engagement that embodies Arendt’s (1958) belief that to distinguish ourselves through our encounters with each other means to risk the disclosure of who we are; without doing so our dialogue exists only as a “means toward the end” (p. 180). We thus embrace this desire to disclose through Martin Buber’s (1947/2002) conception of genuine dialogue in order to open ourselves—a music therapist and a music educator—to the other. It is not to disregard the history and traditions of our disciplines but rather to challenge, as Buber asks of us, “the desire to have one’s own self- reliance confirmed” (p. 23). It is above all to think together what we are doing (Arendt, 1958) unencumbered by presumptions and expectations. 1 Elizabeth Mitchell, PhD, RP, MTA. Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. E-mail: [email protected] 2 Cathy Benedict, EdD, Western University. E-mail: [email protected] 35 EJPAE: 01 2020 vol. 5 Elizabeth Mitchell & Cathy Benedict; Lives in Dialogue: As we examine theoretical and philosophical matters at the heart of our chosen disciplines, we move beyond inter- to transdisciplinarity, “[concerning ourselves] with the unity of intellectual frameworks beyond the disciplinary perspectives” (Stember, 1991, para. 15). We are cognizant of and respect the important body of interdisciplinary scholarship regarding our two disciplines.3 However, we find that this scholarship is often limited in scope, focused upon the “means toward the end” (Arendt, 1958. p. 180) such as the sharing of goals, projects, challenges, and the “learning (and re-learning) of concepts, ways of thinking and practicing” (Tsiris et al., 2016, p. 58). While this interdisciplinary dialogue is necessary and powerful in its impact upon both disciplines, it also often resides in Buber’s conception of “technical dialogue” where “the focal point of the exchange” is to “understand something, or gain information” (Kramer & Gawlick, 2003, p. 33). In this paper, seeking a “higher level of integrated study” (Stember, 1991, para. 15), we see ourselves in “mutual relationship” (Buber, 1947/2002, p. 22) and enter dialogue in order to “[generate] new mean- ings collaboratively through the interpenetration of our knowledge and experiences” (Murphy et al., 2011, p. 112). A recent article makes the distinctions between our disciplines within the con- fines of schooling seem apparent: 3 For example, the International Society for Music Education (ISME) commissions and special interest groups (SIGs) provide its members with opportunities to explore specialised areas of practice and research (ISME, 2016). The Music in Special Education and Music Therapy Commission is a clear avenue for interdisciplinary conversation and research between music educators and music therapists. The Community Music Activity Commission often engages with scholarship that is “located at the interstices of both community music and community music therapy” (Leske, 2016, p. 73) and a recent conference of the Spirituality and Music Education SIG was organised in collaboration with the Nordoff Robbins Centre for Music Therapy (see https://www.nordoff- robbins.org.uk/conference2017). 36 EJPAE: 01 2020 vol. 5 Elizabeth Mitchell & Cathy Benedict; Lives in Dialogue: Goals in music therapy can be physical, emotional, cognitive, or social and can be met through music experiences that include creating, singing, moving to, and/or listening to music. Music education involves the teaching and learning of music. Goals in music education are related to the acquisition of music skills and can be met through creating, performing, responding, or connecting to music. (Smith, 2018, p. 183) While we respect the certitude that comes with such precise definitions, it is exactly this certitude that needs to be thought through. What does it mean to “teach music”? What is being taught, how, for whom, and for what purpose? And what is the ra- tionale for the use of music as a medium for therapy, given that physical, emotional, cognitive, or social goals can also be attained through a multiple of other avenues? Furthermore, might not learning occur in therapy, and development in nonmusical domains occur in education? That our disciplines overlap within school-based special education contexts is well-established (Bunt, 2003; Darrow, 2013; Hammel & Hourigan, 2011; McFerran & Elefant, 2012; Montgomery & Martinson, 2006). Within discourse surrounding the connections between music therapy and special education however, assumptions regarding the purpose of these fields, or the purpose of music in the lives of students/ clients–with or without diagnosed disabilities–often remain unexplored, particularly in the North American context in which we both live and work. Though overlap between our disciplines is assumed within special education contexts (Bonde, 2019; Darrow, 2013; Smith, 2018), there is minimal consideration of broader theoretical and practical points of connection. We propose that there is a need for expansion of exist- ing theoretical perspectives, or the creation of new ones, in order to validate our shared musical medium. Such transdisciplinary perspectives, though relevant to special education, would by necessity hold relevance within any music education context. 37 EJPAE: 01 2020 vol. 5 Elizabeth Mitchell & Cathy Benedict; Lives in Dialogue: Much like Regelski’s (2014) “ethic of resistance” (p. 82) we too strive to resist in- strumental “strategic thinking” and focus on, as Regelski suggests, “the long term musical welfare of students” (p. 82), recognizing that “a relationship to music” is “an essential human need” (Aigen, 2014, p. 39). Our mutual commitment to praxis, and music as a shared medium, helps us to remain aware of the potential problematics of care (so often the uninterrogated guiding principle in our disciplines) construed as le- gitimizing educational or therapeutic intervention (Bowers, 2005, p. 17). Thus, we grapple here with the potential of both music education and therapy construed nar- rowly as “activities intended to produce external ends” versus music education and therapy “done as an end it itself” (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics as cited in Hayden, 2014, p. 16), and seek a more nuanced approach that resists this false dichotomy and embraces both perspectives. Clearly, the potential is neither simple nor obvious, but we seek to perceive "the subjective worth rather than objectified utility" (Holler, 1989, p. 83). In turning toward the other through dialogue, without seeking solutions, we wel- comed “unpredictability and surprise, even possible discordance” (Garred, 2006, p. 100). While perhaps philosophical in nature we believe, as Biesta and Stengel (2016) do, that thinking together offers a way forward that “challenges, qualifies, deepens, and even transforms [an] understanding of a phenomenon (“Introduction”, para. 1). To that end, in this article we work backward from in-person and “live” online dia- logues. In those encounters we discovered, and uncovered,

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